Chaser comedian and TravelDAZE MC Chris Taylor takes on his hardest assignment yet as our Guest Travel Writer in this three-part series on Vietnam. Here is Part 3.
AMANOI
It all comes back to the food. In Vietnam, everything always does. We’re sitting on an outdoor terrace, perched high on a hill in the little-visited Ninh Thuân province of South Central Vietnam, overlooking the blinding royal-blue waters of Vinh Hy Bay. It’s afternoon teatime at Amanoi resort, and I’ve just returned from the buffet with my third plate of goodies.
There are Swiss rolls, Che Thai coconut milk jellies and the silkiest bánh căn rice pancakes topped with sweet pork floss and prawns. But the treat I keep returning for is a garlicky brioche bun with a honey-butter glaze so shiny you can almost see yourself drooling in it.
“I need to get the recipes for these,” I say to my wife, rhetorically.
A couple of minutes later a waiter comes to our table with an envelope. Inside it, magically, is the recipe for the buns. Except of course it’s not magic. It’s just Amanoi being Amanoi: a place so in tune with its customers’ wants, no matter how unserious, that its staff can still divine them even when they’re out of earshot. Perhaps going back for a fourth bun was the giveaway.
Amanoi is part of the luxury Aman group of hotels, famed for developing exceptionally high-end temples of style in remote pockets of natural beauty. I say temple, because there’s something quite deliberately shrine-like and palatial about Amanoi’s aesthetic, conceived by Aman’s go-to architect Jean-Michel Gathy. The sensitively spread-out design can accommodate up to 150 guests in its nine pavilion rooms, 22 pool villas, 11 residences (ranging from one to five bedrooms) and, in an apparent world first, two dedicated wellness villas which come with their own spa, plunge pool, steam room and a personal on-call spa therapist so guests can order-in a foot massage as easily as ordering a burger.
We’ve opted for an Ocean Pavilion. It’s supposedly the entry-level room category, but its floor space is so large you could host an equestrian event in here. It includes a generous balcony with views out to the striking coastline of the Nui Chua National Park, whose dazzling blue bays and rocky clifftops recall the kind of scenery you’d more likely expect to find in the Greek islands than in Vietnam.
Within the national park lies the geologically playful Rock Park (the name needs work), an elevated stretch of coast studded with all manner of imaginatively shaped boulders and outcrops. We head there for a pre-breakfast hike with our infant daughter, who our Amanoi guide keeps meticulously shaded while we take snaps of the eccentric rocky wonderland. He’s even brought along toys to keep her entertained; toys she can keep, that is, not just briefly play with.
Vietnam, generally, is a remarkably child-loving place. What we initially assumed to be above-and-beyond attention from the Amanoi staff later transpires to be a country-wide enchantment with anyone still in nappies. The idea of “adults only” spaces doesn’t appear to exist, as everywhere from roadside beer bars to high-end resorts will not only welcome children but will also very likely have staff who want to take them off your hands (providing that’s what you want). It’s a far cry from places like the UK, where toddlers are typically seen as a nuisance. In Vietnam, a child’s only adversary is the heat.
Thankfully Amanoi has an answer to the scorching April sun: pools. And not just any pools. Guests can choose between cooling off at The Beach Club, an invitingly chic al fresco bar and restaurant whose timber decking stretches seamlessly into an expansive azure pool. Or, for those who prefer their dips to be dramatic, there’s the dizzying infinity pool that improbably sits on a vertiginous clifftop, and where a lap swimmer might feasibly topple over the edge if they weren’t paying proper attention.
Since most Amanoi guests have a pool in their villa, we often have these two glorious pools all to ourselves. It’s an isolation we experience, less happily, at the resort’s other communal areas, such as its restaurants and bars, which – it has to be said – can feel a bit lifeless. I suppose a significant consequence of Amanoi’s villas being so stunningly appointed and well-serviced is that guests tend not to leave them. So the restaurants, at least during our visit, are strangely quiet.
For most of the clientele, I suspect this lack of buzz isn’t an issue. They’re here to switch off, not switch on. But my wife and I, perhaps deludedly, still like to think of ourselves as social creatures. Or, if not social, then at least subscribers to the principle that a core purpose of travel is to open yourself up, not shut yourself off.
With that in mind, we decide on our final night to have dinner at one of the roadside seafood shacks that line the main promenade in the nearby fishing village of Vinh Hy, about a 10-minute drive from Amanoi. Rows of hungry locals, and local tourists, sit along the breakwater wall on miniature plastic chairs, feasting on scallops, clams, snails and whatever else looks good in the seafood tanks that crudely line the pavement, housing that day’s catch. It’s a no cutlery affair. Mollusc shells, once emptied of their meat, are hurled by diners onto the ground, shattering into pieces like Greek plates at a wedding. It’s a scene.
We get a seafood meal and a bucket of beers for $12; something that at Amanoi could have easily set us back $300. But, of course, nobody comes to Amanoi to grumble about the prices. Yes, the resort is eye-wateringly expensive, which can sometimes be hard to reconcile in a country that’s otherwise famously cheap. But only the most churlish traveller could fail to see that the levels of service, of care, of comfort – of sheer bloody luxury – are completely unmatched anywhere else in Vietnam. The whole point of the place isn’t to be representative, but to be defiantly transcendent. The entire Aman ethos is to redefine the heights that customer service can reach.
Let’s fast-forward three months. I’m at home in my kitchen, retrieving my first batch of garlicky brioche buns from the oven. I may not have perfected the shine of the original, but I think the taste is close; close enough, certainly, to transport me back to that sumptuous, sunny terrace in South Central Vietnam, perched high in the hills, and high on life.
